Logos Pathos Ethos, January 2018

Dear speech-fans and -friends,

Happy New Year!

Best wishes to you, speech-fans and –friends
from Australia to Arizona, with most of you reading this newsletter in Europe.

This January 2018 selection has a special
flavour: the best quotes and speeches delivered last month come from men and
women receiving a prize or distinction, from the European Parliament Sakharov
Prize for freedom of thought to the Nobel Prize. These speeches are typically the
perfect occasion to focus on common values, combine logos, pathos and ethos,
and call for action. You will find them below.

You will also find the Bibliography section
updated : Philip Collins’s When they
go low, we go high – speeches that shape the world and why we need them
deserves a special mention : find out why in the bibliography
section.

Best wishes,

Great speeches,

Isabelle

Make it simple – make it tangible

A European will easily identify what is common for a Portuguese and a
Lithuanian, for a Swede and a Croat. Common in the spatial order and
architecture, music, painting and in metaphysical experience. As different and
colourful as we are – as ambiguous and complicated as we are – we all
understand the Bible, Homer, Cicero, Cervantes, Dante and Shakespeare. We find
ourselves in the music of Bach, Chopin and Liszt, in the paintings of Piero
della Francesca and Vermeer. And we all feel good in towns where we can easily
find the market square, directing ourselves towards the distant towers of the
cathedral and the town hall. If we want to protect our territory, it is
precisely because it is defined not only by borders, but also by the symbols of
our culture.

[The Sakharov
Prize] is an acknowledgment for mothers denying themselves food to save their
children, for children rummaging in the rubbish to satiate their hunger, for
old people wasting away to death because of a lack of medicines.

Watch the full speech in Spanish, English,
French, German, Italian or Estonianhere

At
dozens of locations around the world - in missile silos buried in our earth, on
submarines navigating through our oceans, and aboard planes flying high in our
sky - lie 15,000 objects of humankind's destruction.